Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) wants to crack down on botnets and strengthen the cyber defenses for critical infrastructure. And both he and FBI Director James Comey agree that better government-industry cooperation will be critical to those efforts.

Both Comey and Whitehouse spoke at an April 26 cybersecurity event at Georgetown University.

“We simply must get better at working with the private sector,” the FBI director said on April 26. “This is at the core of our being effective.” Comey acknowledged that the FBI’s standoff with Apple over accessing encrypted iPhones had been fairly adversarial, but stressed that, “It would be bad if the conversation this started ended.”